“You called me,” I said. “It’s not the fifteenth.”
“Oh, you know what?” she said. “I meant to call another Sutton.”
“Another Sutton,” I repeated. “How many Suttons do you know?”
My mom let out a snort. “You’d be surprised.”
Okay. “Well, I’m the daughter one,” I said, an uncharacteristically snarky response for me when it came to my mom. I usually kept things light. Didn’t, as I told Everett, rehash the already hashed. “Is Dad alright?”
“Of course,” she said. “He’s on a business trip in Santa Monica.”
“I—” I started, breaking off as the door slid quietly open behind me, shut again. I didn’t know what to say. My mom didn’t know anything about the annual trip to Malibu. And Santa Monica wasn’t San Francisco. But it was a hell of a lotcloser than New York, and I felt it, a small twist at my core, my younger self flinching at the fact that my father hadn’t bothered to tell me he was going to be in my time zone.
“Well, maybe—” I said, not sure what I was going to suggest. That I’d call him. That she and I could talk sooner. I wasn’t going to do either of those things, didn’t even want to. But still, I wanted something. What I had told Everett was true: This didn’t bother me most of the time. I didn’t let it. But it was there now, a small hurt in the center of me.
“Listen, Sutton, I have to go,” my mom said. “Slammed with meetings today. I’ll call you on the fifteenth, okay? And I’ll be sure to add in those last names to my phone so we don’t have this mix-up again.”
“Okay,” I said, instead of the obvious, that I hoped she didn’t need to add my last name, which was hers, to her phone. “I love—”
The line went dead before I could finish.
I stared at my phone screen for a minute, trying hard to push down the anger, sadness, hurt swirling through me. I jumped when I heard the shift of feet behind me. I’d completely forgotten about the door opening.
I turned around to see Everett standing there, watching me. He didn’t ask if I was okay then, didn’t ask who it was, like maybe he already knew. I opened my mouth, fighting back a burning in my eyes that I hadn’t felt in relation to my mom in years.
I shrugged after a minute, still in some suspended state of disbelief.Another Sutton.“I hate parents,” I finally said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. It felt like something my fourteen-year-old self would say, unable to sum up her emotions. Which, maybe, I was still incapable of.
Everett stepped tentatively toward me but I was already closing the space between us, folding myself against his chest as hisarms came around me. I closed my eyes, breathed him in, felt my brain quiet as he held me. I didn’t care that we were in full view of the living room. He was all I wanted in that moment, this person who knew, without my having to expound upon the problem, what I was feeling.
After a minute, I looked up at him. He ran a hand over my hair, smiled softly. “Come on,” he said. “Breakfast, then farmers market?”
I nodded and would have taken his hand as we walked back inside if we were alone. Instead, I tucked the sound of his heartbeat under my ear away, somewhere deep inside me.
“That’s a good lime?” Everett asked, extending the citrus toward me.
“That’s a good lime,” I affirmed. Laurel and Gabe had left us almost immediately in favor of the coffee shop when we got into town. I was feeling better, the conversation with my mom banished to the furthest recesses of my brain, but I still didn’t mind time alone with Everett.
I ran a finger over the lime’s rind. “See how it’s shiny and smooth, kind of heavy? That means it’s juicy.”
“Juicy is good,” Everett said, smiling at me like we were in on some joke. I laughed even though I wasn’t totally clear on what it was.
“Juicy is good.”
“Advice for cooking and for life,” Everett said as he leaned back over the stand, inspecting the other limes.
“We’ll need fifteen-ish,” I said, moving down the table toward a pile of oranges.
“Fifteen limes?” Everett asked, incredulous.
“We’re making margs, friend,” I said. “Margs take a lot of limes. And I need more for guac too.”
“You know, for someone who abbreviates so much, you sure call your friends by their full first names.”
I wrinkled my brow at him as he added limes to the bag in his hand. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just saying—margs, guac, parm, toms, mozz—you seem to shorten most foods.”
“Trick of the trade,” I said. “You’ve got to save time in a kitchen.”
